Mysterious pond circles appear in New York

Photo credit: Facebook/Peggy Gervase

Science Recorder | James Fluere | Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Facebook users voiced a number of explanations for the “eerie” pond circles, including elephant footprints, fish gas and extraterrestrial beings.

“I took a couple pictures of the pond and I put it on Facebook because I’d never seen this before in our pond,” Gervase remarked to WGRZ. “It’s eerie, in a way, and cool in a way. It’s crop circles, crop, pond, water, ice circles — just circles.”

Several mysterious pond circles have appeared in a pond in upstate New York, according to the Daily Mail. Eden resident Peggy Gervase was checking out a pond near her house on Friday evening when she spotted a number of perfectly round circles positioned in the ice. Gervase snapped a photo of the pond circles and posted the picture to the Facebook page of Buffalo-based TV station WGRZ.

According to LiveScience, Facebook users voiced a number of explanations for the “eerie” pond circles, including elephant footprints, fish gas and extraterrestrial beings. Gervase told WGRZ, however, the she doesn’t think aliens are responsible. “I’m not that far gone yet,” she said.

LiveScience notes that there are a number of perfectly plausible explanations for the mysterious pond circles. Natural springs, for example, frequently bring ponds warmer water than the water sitting at the pond’s surface during the winter. The warmer water rises and produces the pond circles as it melts the snow and ice at the surface. Gases from decaying vegetation could also be responsible for the pond circles.

The pond circles are similar to another phenomenon that often occurs in farmers’ fields: crop circles. LiveScience’s Benjamin Radford explained the mystery behind crop circles earlier this year in an article titled, “Crop Circles Explained.” According to Radford, there is not a shred of doubt that crop circles are real, but the question that often stumps everyone is: what or who is responsible for creating them?

Though numerous theories exist, the wildest one in circulation in the early 1980s was that the crop circles were generated by the “vigorous sexual activity of horny hedgehogs.” Others have suggested that aliens are responsible for the circles, making them from their spaceships.
However, Radford notes that the only proven cause of these strange patterns is humans. In 1991, two men revealed that they had made the patterns for years to convince people that aliens had visited. According to Radford, most crop circle researchers acknowledge that crop circles are produced by humans. Given the watery location of these pond circles, however, an explanation involving human activity can probably be ruled out.

What do you think led to the appearance of mysterious pond circles in a New York pound?

Sound off in the comments section.

Read more: http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/mysterious-pond-circles-appear-in-new-york-fish-gas-or-aliens/#ixzz2Om1Ih6jO

IonOtter • an hour ago

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Having lived around water, both fresh and salt, all my life, I know exactly what this is: springs. Springs, or some kind of upwelling of warmer waters from down below. The key reason the owner is seeing them *this* year, as opposed to other years, is probably due to the late spring and heavy snow/rain in the upstate NY area.

In years past, there would still be thick ice on the ponds, so the ice would be too thick to melt like the photo. But there's already been thawing and melting, so the ice is much thinner than normal. And because of all that thawing and melting, water has already started sinking into the ground, and coming out at lower elevations. Lower elevations such as the bottom of this pond. Again, the owner would never even notice the upwelling, because the pond is normally free of ice this time of year. But thanks to the re-freeze, they can now see it.